38. Rivers Flowing Out

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38. Rivers Flowing Out - for Notes

38. Rivers Flowing Out - PP

  
Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle (Psalm 24:7-8).

Clearly, when we first place the Gate upon ourselves, the King of glory enters into us. Nonetheless, in our present study, we are seeing this wonder from the other direction. When the Gate of the Resurrection opens, the King of glory is entering into His creation to win the hearts of all.

Following is a reduced portion of Ezekiel’s view of the river of life, Ezekiel 47:1 & 8 & 12.


Ezekiel’s River. Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and there was water, flowing from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the front of the temple faced east; the water was flowing from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar. – Then he said to me: “This water flows toward the eastern region, goes down into the valley, and enters the sea. When it reaches the sea, its waters are healed. And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live. – Along the bank of the river… will grow all kinds of trees… their fruit will not fail. …their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine.


The Ark Going Forth. God’s primary metaphor is the Tabernacle. Solomon and Ezekiel’s temples are extensions of that primary metaphor.

The picture God gives us with the Tabernacle is the Ark of the Covenant going forth with all Israel following.

The best picture of that experience is the crossing of the Jordan – Joshua 3:2-4. “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it. …that you may know the way by which you must go, for you have not passed this way before.”


The Triumphal Procession. We are weaving together two metaphors to speak of the same thing, the flowing of rivers out from the Altar and the going forth of the Ark as the presence of God.

And we know everything in the Old Testament by the ruling verses of the Bible; that’s why we do not allow various complicated layouts to raise unanswerable questions. We seek to know only Christ our life.

Here is the gospel version of these things. God always leads us in the triumphal procession inside of Christ, with the aroma of His knowledge being made visible through us in every place (2 Corinthians 2:14).


Levels of Spirit-Flow. And again, He who believes into me, as the Scripture has said, Rivers of living water will overflow out of his belly [his womb, his innermost being].” Moreover, this He said concerning the Spirit… (John 7:38-39).

This going forth in confidence as the aroma of Christ in every place, this outflow of rivers of living water from our bellies is right now in every present moment because we believe into Jesus. Right now, we walk by faith that everything God says is true of us in the present moment, regardless of what we see.

But the Resurrection will take all these things to a wondrously new level.


We Will See Wonders. Here is the important thing between now and then, however. We will see with our eyes then ONLY what we believe is true now, though we see it not.

Everything in the Resurrection will be glorious beyond measure, but none of it will be a surprise, for all of it is Christ through us now.

The purpose of this lesson is to look briefly at that outflow of life and healing and joy going into every place after the Resurrection, but we receive all these things as being just as true for us now. And I can promise you this, we will see wonders even before our bodies are swallowed up by life.


The Liberty of the Spirit. The Rivers flowing out are clearly a metaphor of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus said. We know the Holy Spirit, and we know how that Spirit works in our lives and in the lives of others.

In the Resurrection, however, the liberty of the Holy Spirit to accomplish Father and our desire will be at a level not known before. Nonetheless, the Spirit remains a Spirit of liberty and will never force anyone against their will, neither does the Spirit just “do” without being sent.

And this sending is the role of the resurrected sons of God.


Now Us Together. Then, consider the going forth of the Ark, symbolizing now, not just us as individual sons of God, but us together.

Let me state that again, for that seems clear to me. Inside the Holiest, the Ark of Covenant and Mercy speaks of God inside of each one of us personally. But in the going forth of the Ark beyond the Gate and into creation, the togetherness of the Body of Christ, members of one another, is a key feature of that Ark.

The Ark, of course, is Covenant and Mercy, or, we could say, Covenant and Kingdom. It is you and me together filled with God and revealing God to all.

A Personal Purpose. Having the larger picture, then, let’s turn to some practical application of that larger vision. God is Personal and His touch is personal to each one and God moves out from each of our persons. The Holy Spirit, then, moves inside this framework and not as a general “force.”

When our son was living 500 miles away, Maureen and I prayed, and the Spirit moved miraculously to affect his life. But across that “500-mile-reach,” the Spirit sent out from us did not affect all the millions in-between.

The sons and the Spirit work always together with purpose.


Five “Super-Powers.” In laying out the outline for my series on A Highway for God, I envisioned five “super-powers” possessed by the sons of God. Those five “super-powers” are (1) forgiveness, (2) healing, (3) deliverance (4) abundance (5) love.

And, of course, “super-powers” are qualities that go forth from us to impact other people. As you can see, these are the opposite of what the world calls “superpower.”

I want to look briefly at each of these, however, to see how each one moves out by the Spirit from a local Community of Christ in the Age of Tabernacles to affect people.


Forgiveness. Forgiveness is the end result of justice and justice comes only out from judgment.

Here is the sword coming out from Jesus’ mouth, striking down His enemies. – “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Do you see the terrible judgment in His words? For them to receive that forgiveness, they must receive the justice of Jesus’ words, that their whole self-story is false.

This is always the first quality of Spirit going out from us as sons of God together to affect the lives of others. Judgment always comes first.


Healing. All false self stories are built around hurt, loneliness, and shame. When the false story goes silent, healing must come next.

The time of my false story built around hurt, loneliness and shame covered thirty-five years. The time of the direct and specific healing of God has covered twenty-two years. Healing is a big deal. And my healing is complete only through the present judgment of writing my life-story.

Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up (Hosea 6:1). God’s order – judgment first, then healing.


Deliverance. In the present age, deliverance includes our present battle against heavenly evil and our providing of protection to God’s people all across the earth. This great climax, however, will result in the removal of all false angels from the human experience.

Protection and shelter provided by us towards all will continue forever, however. This is the power of love to cover all for all.

This need for protection continuing forever is a result of God’s inability to sin by forcing anyone and of the liberty of the Spirit to live in whatever expression one chooses.


Abundance. We know from Jesus’ parable of the exuberant father that Abundance is the continuous outflow of our present Personal Father. Abundance is the chief characteristic of God made visible.

This abundance of provision flows through us right now towards His people but will increase in incredibly surprising ways in the resurrection. We have no idea of the kinds of abundance that will flow out from us to all. Science is yet in its infancy.

Yet I am convinced that the abundance of God will never remove the need for and the joy of working with our hands.


Love. Love is committed relationship, the quality of being there for one another. Love is the most overwhelming power in the universe.

Love walks beneath; love sees others as better. Love grants such respect of honor and belonging to each individual created being that all hearts are won to Jesus.

The one who loves, rules, yet never by compulsion, but only by the delight of the one being loved. Yet Love is always setting free, and the one who loves is always paying the price for the freedom of the other.


God Reveals Himself. I have made each of these five “super-powers” partly personal to our own lives because God is always personal. Nonetheless, we are seeing them here as our ministry as sons of God in the resurrection sending forth Rivers of Spirit to transform all human society.

We together place the Covenant of Word and the Practice of Mercy as the ordering and the flow of all things.

Yet none of this is of us, for we possess all these things in power inside our human vessels of weakness forever. We possess God our Father, and He reveals Himself to all through our love for one another.